Judge questions scarcity of fraud charges

He says feds have prosecuted businesses, not CEOs for fiscal misconduct

8:14 PM,
Dec. 27, 2013

Jed Rakoff

Written by

Kevin McCoy
| USA Today

Why haven't top business executives faced fraud charges for wrongdoing related to the national fiscal crisis? A senior federal judge questions whether weaknesses in the U.S. prosecutorial system could be to blame.

New York District Court Judge Jed Rakoff questioned in an essay for the New York Review of Books whether federal prosecutors gave other cases higher priority because they would take less time and resources to investigate and lead to high-profile trials or guilty pleas. He stopped short of concluding that frauds definitely sparked the crisis.